


Sacrilege

by Xangonne



Category: Call of Cthulhu: Path of Perdition (Web Series), Internet Remix, Rolling with Remix: Masks of Nyarlathotep (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27010600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xangonne/pseuds/Xangonne
Summary: "There was something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that had nothing to do with God."― F. Scott Fitzgerald, AbsolutionorAll the places in which only Man dares to tread.
Relationships: Kit Sullivan/Original Male Character, Sunil Pandey & Kit Sullivan, Sunil Pandey/Kit Sullivan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

"I was under the impression that you were a stranger to London, Kit."

It was early spring in London. Sunil and Kit had taken to walking in the afternoons, partially to take advantage of the pleasant weather, and partially because conversation was always easier in motion. The two of them had fallen into a comfortable companionship since they had both found themselves in Europe. However, even between Kit's appearances in London and their ongoing mail correspondence, there were a number of subjects that the two of them avoided as if there was an unspoken agreement between them.

If they spoke about their time together in the United States and on-board the California Limited, it was very sparingly. Speaking about what happened in Madrid, Santa Fe, and Kansas was even rarer than that.

They had never spoken about the War before.

Kit tilted his head towards Sunil. His expression had landed somewhere half-way between curiosity and amusement. "You were?"

The conversation had started when Sunil noticed Kit's unusual familiarity with certain areas of London-- idle comments here and there about how a certain business had closed over the past number of years, or how parts of the city seemed busier than usual.

"Well, yes."

There was a long pause where Kit did not answer. Sunil narrowed his eyes.

"Kit, the first time you showed up, you mentioned that you'd never visited before."

Kit relented. "I suppose I never came to London in a 'visiting' capacity until recently."

"Kit. You knew what I meant."

Kit held his hands up in surrender at Sunil's accusatory tone. "I know. I did. I just never thought of it as much of a visit, to be completely honest." He took the time to choose his next words carefully. "The time I previously spent in London was directly before and after the time I spent in France."

"Oh."

They walked on in silence for a while. Sunil glanced over at Kit's face. He hadn't ignored Kit's injury, but he had also not considered it in a long time. It was not uncommon, in England, to see men that bore the physical scars of war. It hadn't been nearly as common in America. Perhaps that was why-- 

With that realization, Sunil felt as though he had uncovered something that had been previously hidden, and now held it in the palm of his hand. Something private. Something that was never meant to be seen. 

"I'm sorry."

Kit sighed, and his breath wisped out into the air. It was spring, but the wind still carried with it the bitter memories of the frost. "It's fine. It was something I should have mentioned earlier."

The two of them waited for traffic to pass before crossing the street and heading into the park on the other side.

"I spent most of my time down in Bexley, anyways." Kit continued, as if to fill the sudden silence that had taken root between the two of them.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious-- any soldier that was injured badly enough would have passed through London in some way or another. Either through to the military hospitals, or on to ships, homeward bound. Sunil was familiar with Bexley. He had not spent a lot of time in the area, but he knew enough about Queen Mary's Hospital, and the work that was done there.

"You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to." Sunil had caught a glimpse of that hidden something; and now his curiosity was pushing him further and further down a line of questioning that he was not sure he would be able to back down from once he began to pursue it. He felt like he was on the brink of the tenuous boundary between them, and just a breath away from crossing it altogether.

Kit stopped at a bench that overlooked the Italian Gardens. It was still too cold for the fountains to run, but the ice had thawed in the afternoon sun. He considered the bench for a moment, and then looked to Sunil. "You can go ahead and ask." Kit sat down.

Sunil joined him, sitting to his right. He took a moment to look over the terraces, where things were just starting to come back to life after the long winter. The climbing vines were brown, but here and there, buds were beginning to form. "When were you drafted?"

Kit smiled crookedly. "I wasn't."

Understanding bloomed across Sunil's face, but after it did, Sunil blanched. "I had no idea you volunteered."

Kit folded his arms and looked up to the sky.

"I was going on 21 when President Woodrow Wilson declared war on the German Empire, and I enlisted the very next day."


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

I was young, dumb, and felt like I had something to prove. The war was a concept that existed in the abstract for me-- a conflict over-seas that had been raging for years by the time the United States decided to get involved.

I remember hearing the news and thinking to myself: "Here is my chance." My chance at what? At making something of myself? Of dying? Of being respected? It was so long ago that I have trouble remembering the why. Kit Sullivan in 1917 was a very different person than the Kit Sullivan of 1918, and he's even farther away from me. Looking back, it's very easy to see how foolish he was, and how young he was.

I didn't tell my family I enlisted until it was time for me to go out for basic training. I knew Erin would be livid, which she was. I knew my mother would be worried, which she was. My father, on the other hand, was proud of me. When I finally told him, he put a hand on my shoulder and it was like he was seeing me for the first time. I don't remember what exactly he said, but it was approval. That's what convinced me I was doing the right thing. That approval.

My father was the one who saw me off when I shipped out from the New York harbour. He was in his officer's uniform, and he gave me a single wave before he disappeared into the crowd. That wave meant everything to me. I finally had what I had wanted from him for a very long time, and it only took being sent to war.

* * *

Kit, at some point during his reminiscence, had leaned back and covered the right side of his face with his hand. He looked up at the sky through splayed fingers.

Sunil looked at him quietly, his normally nervous energy replaced with stillness. It felt as though if he moved, he would break the moment. "You've never mentioned your father before."

Kit did a little half-shrug. "There's not much to mention. He lives in New York. He's an officer on the force there. We don't speak much."

Sunil toyed with the end of his scarf, deep in thought.

Kit sighed. "I haven't seen him since he saw me off, that day."

"Not at all?"

"No."

"Kit, you've really gone almost 5 years without seeing your own father?" The pain in Sunil's voice was obvious, and Kit shrank back a bit at the sudden outburst.

"I've written to him."

"What the hell, Kit?!"

"It's not that simple--"

"--Well then explain it to me!"

The air between them stilled, and Kit buried his face in his hands. Sunil waited, his arms folded.

"We... We weren't ever on the best of terms. He had a lot of expectations, but when it came to me, I always felt that I had failed him in every single one of them. When Erin, my mother, and I moved to Boston; he stayed in New York, which should give you an idea of what kind of a man he is." Kit spoke simply, and without emotion. "I think me enlisting was the first time I ever made him proud."

Kit clasped his hands together, and entwined his fingers until the knuckles turned white. "I think that he would still be proud of me. Even though I came home disfigured." The rasp of Kit's voice became more pronounced as he struggled to speak. "I don't think I would be able to stand that."

Sunil's brow was still furrowed, but the anger had left his face. "Sometimes I wonder if I will ever understand you, Dr. Sullivan."

Kit barked out a short laugh that turned into a dry, hacking cough. "I don't know what there is to understand." He turned to Sunil and fixed him with a sharp gaze. "Maybe understanding anything at all is the impossible part."

Sunil shifted backwards under the sudden scrutiny. He had not expected to be put on the defensive. "What do you mean by that?"

There was a note of bitterness in Kit's voice as he continued.

* * *

My doubts began to set in the instant my boots touched the ground in France. That's also when I started writing different versions of the same letter. One version for my mother, and one version for Erin.

I still left things out of both. How could I tell them everything I saw? They wouldn't understand. There was no way for someone back home to understand the madness in those fields. In those trenches. In the very mud itself.

I was with the 1st Army of the American Expeditionary Force, so I was in France for a long time. At the end of my first week there, I was already looking back at the kid who got on that boat in New York-- rosary in hand-- and thinking about how much of a damn fool he was.

The army gave me a gun. They gave me a rank. I had just gotten my doctorate, so suddenly I was a 1st Lieutenant. Suddenly I had a command. Suddenly, I was in charge of these... these kids. I held their lives in my hands.

On some level, I always knew what it would be like. I saw the Tommies on leave in London, before we crossed the channel. I saw their eyes.

* * *

Kit had reached into his pocket and retrieved a rosary. He twined the beads through his fingers, and counted them silently, lips barely moving. The rosary itself was simple, and worn.

"May I make a confession?" Kit turned his head slightly, so he could better see Sunil, who sat on his bad side. There was a wry smile on Kit's face.

"You can go ahead, but I'm not Catholic."

Kit laughed softly. "That's a small comfort." The smile slowly faded, as the rosary drew his focus once more. "I haven't prayed in a very long time. It doesn't make sense to me anymore. Even before, it didn't feel right. It didn't feel like it was something that belonged to me."

He continued twisting the beads between his fingers in contemplation. "It never felt like something that I was allowed to do." His voice was barely audible.

* * *

I spent most of my time about 500 yards behind the front line. I was in the Medical Corps, but I was assigned alongside an infantry division. Where they went, I went. Where the front was, I was; at the Regimental Aid station nearby. We were the first line of triage, as the French called it. The wounded came to us first. We patched them up as best we could, we sent the walking wounded on their way, and we did our best to keep those kids alive until they went into surgery further down the line.

There was working, but then there was working under fire. No amount of training can prepare you for it: the whine of the artillery, the screaming retorts of the guns-- these all became the ordinary background of our lives. This was normalcy. The crack of a sniper's rifle. The explosions. The dull whines of the reconnaissance planes as they flew overhead. We got accustomed to it.

Every face was a blur. They were no longer soldiers. They were no longer people. They were meat. Meat and viscera. They were bone and blood, and nothing else. Everything went numb. My fingers. My face. My everything. I became a machine. Patch, extract, sew, bandage; and then send them down the line. I'd send them down the line to live another day, and then they'd be sent right back up the line to die. It never ended.

It was senseless. Senseless.

We worked alongside the French and the British. I remember a French doctor worked a rotation between our aid station and the field hospital further back. He smoked these thin, hand-rolled cigarettes. He told me he had been a professor before, he taught as a surgeon at the University of Paris, and that he had followed a good many of his students to war.

"I have but one piece of advice to give you, Lt. Sullivan." He told me one night. We had not slept in 3 days, and the shelling had not relented the entire time. The glow of his cigarette lit up his face, and it seemed like he was the only source of warmth in the entire place. We were huddled together under one of the tents, and the rain was pounding a miserable rhythm against the canvas overhead.

He looked at me, and it was only then that I realized he could not have been much older than I was; but I saw his eyes. I knew the look in his eyes. "Yes, Capitaine?"

Capitaine LeBeau offered me a cigarette and lit it for me; his hands close to my face, cupping the fragile flame. His dark eyes glittered like coals.

"Do not learn their names."

I didn't need to ask. I knew exactly what he meant. We sat across from each other, and the mask he had been wearing for the past four weeks slipped-- I could see the sorrow and pain on his face. The exhaustion that matched my own.

"Do not become attached. Do not learn their stories. You will go mad." He leaned forward and gently tapped my chest, over my heart. "It will break you."

"What are we supposed to do then?" I remember asking him.

"We do what we can, Lieutenant." I remember his pained smile. "We do all that we can."

I didn't realize I was crying until the tears were already falling from my eyes. He held me there, as I cried.

When more wounded were brought in by the stretcher-bearers, we rose. I wiped away my tears, and we got back to work.

The Capitaine was right. It was easier to be an automaton. It was easier to lock away your heart in an iron cage, safe from the rest of the world. It was safer to try and keep that splinter of humanity alive deep within your chest.

* * *

Kit blinked hard and turned away, looking out, looking towards the tree-line. He maintained his gaze there until his breathing evened out, and Sunil noticed that Kit's hands had been shaking. Kit rubbed at his good eye before turning back to Sunil. "Sorry." His voice was rough, and it rattled in his throat more painfully than it usually did.

"No need to apologise." Sunil glanced at Kit out of the corner of his eye. Wanting to, in a way, give him a little space. "I did ask."

"And I did answer." It was a statement, and not accusatory in any way. Even so, Sunil found himself a little uncomfortable.

"The French Captain you worked with, LeBeau. What happened to him?"

"Last I knew, he made it out alive. We didn't make plans to keep in touch. Neither one of us... neither one of us wanted to get too attached." There was a fleeting softness to Kit's voice, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

"You never tried finding him after the war?"

"I'd be a liar if I told you I never thought about it." Kit took a deep breath. "But no. I haven't tried."

"Why not?"

Kit did not answer.

Sunil nodded slowly and shifted the topic. "What was he like?"

* * *

Compassionate, I would say.

Beneath the hard exterior he wore by necessity, he was still compassionate. And it was compassion that drove him to give me that advice. He was a soldier, yes, but he was a doctor first. We both were. Amidst all of the ways that our armies developed to tear people apart, here we were, desperately trying to put them back together again.

I remember once, we were moving forward. Our boys on the front line had advanced past the German lines, so we were to move up. I remember travelling across the German trenches, only to be stopped and held at rifle-point by an enemy soldier. He had to have only been 16. I remember how pale his face was under the mud and dirt, and how he had to brace himself and the rifle against the earthen embankment just to keep his aim on us. He had an abdominal injury, and there was a collage of fresh and old blood seeping its way through his grey, woolen greatcoat. He clutched at his stomach with one hand, and desperately tried to keep his rifle level with the other arm. He said something in German. I didn't understand him, but I could hear the fear in his voice.

I had my rifle out already, pointed at him, but I couldn't do it. Capitaine LeBeau and I stood there for what seemed like hours, but it can't have been more than a minute.

LeBeau was the first to lower his gun. "Ich bin ein Doktor." He slowly put the palm of his hand over his heart. He approached the kid-- because this was no enemy, this was just a kid-- and with his hand out-stretched. "Wir helfen du? Ja?" he asked with broken German.

I looked to Cpt. LeBeau, who nodded. I lowered my rifle. Tears streaked down the kid's face, leaving tracks in the dirt, and his own rifle slipped from his hand into the mud. He babbled a stream of German, too fast for me to try and understand. We approached carefully, and he allowed us to come close. He whispered 'danke' over and over again as we cleaned, stitched, and dressed the wound with gentle fingers. We gave him morphine for the pain, and helped him to his feet.

The kid's name was Fritz, we learned, as we spoke with him in a combination of pidgin German, French, and English. He had been left behind. He surrendered. He wanted to come with us.

I remember thinking with sudden clarity what would have happened to Fritz if anyone other than us would have happened upon him first. I could see tears in the Capitaine's eyes as he reassured the kid that we wouldn't leave him alone.

He came with us as our 'prisoner', and he left his rifle behind in the mud, where he dropped it. We made sure he was treated well.

* * *

"Would you have gotten in trouble for that? For helping the enemy?"

Kit shrugged. "I didn't know at the time, and I didn't care. The US army had its own policies, but the French and the British had been fighting for years at this point. On some level we all knew that we weren't actually fighting each other. Our quarrel wasn't with the boys across the barbed wire."

"I do know that if anybody else had found that kid, he would have been shot dead without hesitation. Without even a second thought."

* * *

I took Cpt. LeBeau's advice. I tried not to get attached. And he was right, if I didn't, I would have gone insane.

But there was still a sliver nestled in my chest. I may have had to put on armour of one kind but--

There had always been something hidden there already, and maybe it took--

...

I found... I found that something I had tried to lock away and bury, deep within me, had become my only source of light.

...

I think the Capitaine knew. He must have. Here we were in this place that made no sense-- this absurd, terrifying, God-less place! He saw, and he knew, and it didn't matter. And for once, this... this was the only beautiful thing left in my life.

* * *

Kit lapsed into silence.

Sunil picked idly at the wood of the bench.

"He saved my life." Kit said quietly.

"Hm?"

"He saved my life. It was the last offensive of the war. The lines were advancing through the forest of Argonne. Our Aid Station was shelled, and gassed. There was an explosion." Kit hesitantly put fingers to the ruined side of his face.

"I was caught in the middle of it. He went back in for me, to get me to safety. I don't remember it happening, but I remember him carrying me out through the fog." Kit looked out, over the trellises and vines. The sun had risen high in the sky at this point, and the warmth began to do its work on the last remnants of snow and ice that covered the ground.

"I remember him whispering to me in French as he carried me. 'Vous vivrez' he told me, over and over again. 'Vous vivrez, ma chère.'"

Kit turned to Sunil. Kit did not try to hide the melancholy on his face, or the tears welling up behind his eyes. "I guess I did end up living, after all."


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

The afternoon gave way to evening. Kit checked his pocket-watch, and the two of them made their way through the park and back to Sunil's home. They spoke sparingly, keeping the conversation light-- testing the waters. Testing what fragile thing still existed between them. Sunil was kind enough to not mention what he saw behind Kit's mask once it slipped. He was kind enough to not bring up the fear, or the anguish that had coloured every syllable when Kit spoke. When Kit remembered.

Sunil stopped as they approached his home. He hung back for a moment, at the gate, and ran his fingers over the points of the wrought-iron fence.

"Kit, before we go inside..."

Kit turned back to Sunil, the fence between them. "Yes?"

"The way you spoke about him... I don't think I've heard you talk about anyone like that."

Kit gave Sunil a little half-shrug. "It's ancient history. Why come back to it?"

Sunil searched Kit's face. "It's different, that's all. I don't think I've ever heard you so..." Sunil paused to carefully choose his next words. "So open?" He drummed his fingers on the wrought-iron. "I guess you never struck me as someone who was very close to other people."

Kit gave Sunil a peculiar look.

"What?"

Kit raised his eyebrow. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Sunil frowned. "I know nothing when I hear it and see it, Dr. Sullivan. That was not nothing."

"Well, in that case, let's just call it nothing and leave it at that." Kit smiled, a genuine smile that lit up his eyes. Sunil felt his heart skip a beat. "What do you say?"

Suddenly, Sunil felt as though he was exposed. As if something he himself did not recognize was laid bare in the evening sun. And yet, he didn't mind. Curiously enough, he didn't mind at all. "Sure. Nothing it is, then."

"Here's to nothing, then." Kit hummed-- a comforting raspy noise. Sunil found himself smiling back.

"To nothing, indeed."

The two of them did not speak much for the rest of the day, but the tension that had been strung between them eased.

* * *

Sunil tugged the brim of his hat down as he considered his next move. The board looked as though Kit was trying to set up a Lasker trap, but that was easy enough to circumvent. He chewed on his lip. 

Kit's face remained in a carefully-arranged neutral expression: his gaze was mild, and there was an infuriating hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Kit had attempted to teach Sunil poker, but the two of them quickly gave up on cards once they realized they were both a bit rubbish at them. They instead settled on chess, which Sunil didn't necessarily consider an improvement.

"Have something in mind?" The wry amusement in Kit's voice was not lost on Sunil.

"Shush. Be patient." Sunil decisively took Kit’s pawn, doubling two of his in one column. Seeing Kit deflate a little as the trap was foiled was gratifying.

Kit returned to pondering on his own side, toying with a chess piece.

"Do you think less of me, knowing I wasn't in the war?" Sunil looked across the table to Kit, who had stilled his fidgeting. Kit moved his bishop into position with a gentle tap.

"Why do you ask?" Kit's voice was a touch softer than usual.

Sunil averted his eyes and studied the board closely. "It's something I've thought about before. I will admit, hearing you speak about it has brought the question back to the forefront." He idly moved a knight into position to threaten one of Kit's pawns.

Kit frowned. "I would never think less of you for something like that, Sunil."

Sunil rested his elbows on the table and leaned over the board. It felt as though the War was something he would never understand. A gap that he would never be able to cross. He had been a student during the Great War, studying to become a doctor. He had never been called to the front because of it, and now he found himself struggling with his lack of knowledge-- his lack of experience. It itched at him-- his desire to empathize combined with his desire to know.

Kit continued: "It's not something I would wish on anyone." He looked up at Sunil with a sad smile. "If anything, I'm very thankful that you never had to experience it."

Sunil nodded. He didn't say anything. Instead, he watched Kit move a bishop forward to put pressure on his knight.

* * *

The night was getting on in hours. The two of them sat in a comfortable silence in Sunil's living room, each one doing something different, but each one also enjoying the other's presence. Sunil worked at his writing desk, clacking away on an older-model typewriter; and Kit was in the middle of reading a novel he had borrowed from the Pandey bookshelf. Sunil was in the midst of revising one of his newest research proposals, but he paused to stretch and sit down next to Kit on the couch. Kit hummed and closed his novel, keeping his place with one finger.

"May I ask you something?"

Kit closed the novel entirely and put it aside. "Of course."

"If you had the chance, would you want to find him again? LeBeau, I mean?"

Kit studied Sunil's expression before answering. "I don't think I would."

"Really? Why not?"

"I think I have everything I could ever want." Kit stopped to consider it, then tilted his head to the side a little so he could better see Sunil. "I think, right here and right now, I'm happy."

Sunil realized that perhaps for the first time he was seeing a man who, despite everything, had managed to pull the parts of himself back together. He was not whole. He was not mended. He would never be the person he once was. But he was still Kit. And this Kit was his Kit.


End file.
